A few months ago, a friend of mine fell off her bicycle somewhere in the Silverlake neighbourhood of Los Angeles, and a gallant and handsome gentleman rushed to her aid. Gleaming smile, ridiculously chivalrous, arm around waist, "How's that limp now? Steady, OK, there you go." Jon Hamm, it turned out – total gent. Made her whole week.

It's safe to imagine that scenario being acted out (with additional scenes) in the daydreaming mind of many a female (or male) fan of Mad Men and, looking at the guy, it's not hard to see why. His appearance suggests the presence in our midst of some sublimer parallel realm whose denizens all look like him. He could grow a Grizzly Adams beard and I swear he'd still look finely chiselled and freshly plucked.

Hamm is in a complicated limbo right now, and you wonder what will happen to him next. So far his movie career has taken place in the uncertainty-filled annual hiatuses from Mad Men – and TV stars, superstars even, seldom get first dibs on the hot projects. So far we've had The Day The Earth Stood Still, which he made slightly less stinky; Ben Affleck's C-plus The Town, in which Hamm lent considerable force to his underwritten cop role; a memorable icy on-the-phone cameo in A Single Man; and smaller parts in Howl and Sucker Punch. He's that oddity: a character player blessed with star quality. That may or may not bode well for a transition to the big screen, which will probably happen once Mad Men times out. At that point the question will be: but can you open a movie on him?

Bridesmaids suggested another path. Likewise, his new comedy of bourgeois dilemmas, Friends With Kids. Directed by his partner, Jennifer Westfeldt, it offers another taste of Hamm's sparkling chemistry with Kristen Wiig, as a sex-obsessed couple in a marital tailspin, a hideous warning to the film's leads, non-married titular parents Westfeldt and Adam Scott.

As he's revealed to us the many layers of Don Draper's tormented psyche, Hamm has simultaneously been building an equal and opposite career as Saturday Night Live's most beloved unofficial cast member since Alec Baldwin. Whether he's pitching Jon Hamm's John-Ham ("Finally! Ham you can eat on the john!") or cavorting as manic, mulleted saxophonist "Sergio", he's not the buttoned-down ad-man we think we know. This is mad in other ways, in his feverish abandon and willingness to embrace any degree of ridicule, right down to booty-dancing for Betty White. And then there's his sexist asshole-player role in Bridesmaids which, along with Don Draper's darker side, shows he's not vain or dainty about playing complete dicks.

When the time comes, which way will Jon Hamm jump? Mad or Crazy? It'll be worth watching either way.